Troubleshooting a CTD issue during play

[heliosine]

Hey there!

 

First off I'd like to say thanks to all the wonderful contributors to the site. I have now gotten many hours of enjoyment out of Skyrim thanks to getting into modding it. Fairly soon, I plan to start learning more about the modding process, and hope to bring you folks some new mods of my own. This site has been a great resource for info on troubleshooting and learning, and without it I wouldn't be where I am today.

 

I have gotten to the point where I am able to (relatively safely) run 170 mods without any major issues, except the occasional CTD during play. I have been able to fix all of my issues myself thus far, but this latest one has me a bit puzzled. I suspect this is the culprit behind my aforementioned CTDs that I sometimes get!

 

According to my Crash Fix Plugin error log, the CTD occurred sometime around the time these files were loaded by the client, and it suspects a corrupted .nif to be the cause:

 

 

06 Jun 18:44:11 Game has crashed while reading binary data stream! This could indicate a corrupt NIF file. Here are the last opened files starting from most recent:

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 0.343000 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 0.718000 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 1.482 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\TEXTURES\Weapons\spikedshield\spikedshield_n.dds" 1.560 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\TEXTURES\Weapons\spikedshield\spikedshield.dds" 1.623 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 1.919 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 2.62 seconds ago.

 

E:\lhdd\Progs\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\DATA\aag" 2.98 seconds ago.

 

The spikedshield.dds and spikedshield_n.dds look normal when loaded in paint.net. I extracted them using Fallout Mod Manager and checked them out myself, even though they aren't .nifs (I figured why not check them?). What I don't get is the "\aag" directory. In any case, I found spikedshield.nif in the Skyrim - Meshes archive using the mod manager and extracted it to the Nif Healer "\in" folder. Nif Healer says it didn't make any changes, and it spits nothing out into the "\out" folder; I am assuming that this means the file isn't corrupted. Does anyone have any ideas about what in "\aag" could be causing the CTD? And how I could access this directory? 

 

I have considered that maybe the issue isn't related to the latest loaded files reported by Crash Fix Plugin, but something prior to that data stream. Don't know if this is cogent or not, though. I do have Immersive Armors and Immersive Armors UNP Refit, and from some cursory Google searches, it seems IA included a corrupt .nif or two at some point. I also have aMidianBorn's armor installed, but if I recall correctly, I think those are only textures. Load order has been sorted by LOOT, but I have not tinkered in TES5Edit or Wrye Bash yet - still learning to use those.